New Ad Strategy: Swap Sexy for Creepy?
For a couple of years, GoDaddy made headlines for all the wrong reasons. During the Super Bowl, scantily clad B-list women and “athletes” would offer themselves up for innuendo, double entendre, and a few other Latin words.
Since June 2012, GoDaddy has attempted to stray from that image with a different advertising campaign featuring the acuity of Deutsch New York. According to The New York Times, the URL storehouse will announce its plans to hire Barton F Graf 9000 as its U.S. creative AOR today.
Here’s why…
As quiet as the story may have been, there were a few changes in ownership and executive ranks within GoDaddy. Based on numbers from Kantar Media (WPP), GoDaddy spent $22.9 million last year on advertising in major media, $34.6 million in 2012, $35.2 million in 2011, $31.4 million in 2010, and $22.3 million in 2009.
Since then, Deutsch New York completed four rounds of work that tried to cultivate “a more grown-up, professional persona for GoDaddy”. Now, however, they’ve been pushed aside to make room for BFG9K.
“The agency is so much like our customer, starting from scratch, bootstrapping it,” Ms. Rechterman said of Barton F. Graf 9000, and as a result, it “understands this customer much better. It’s easy to change an image; it’s hard to change reality, and the reality is that customers appreciate GoDaddy’s services. ”
Gerry Graf, who opened his agency in 2010, described himself as “a satisfied GoDaddy customer.” (Of course he is.)
Although “there are some negative parts” of the GoDaddy image, Mr. Graf acknowledged, “when you look at what GoDaddy actually does, it helps millions of people. I know. I was a one-person business three years ago, and I used GoDaddy.” (The agency now has 30 to 35 employees.)
Barton F. Graf 9000 has also worked for marketers and brands that include Axe, Finlandia cheese, Little Caesars, Ragú and Supercell, a company that creates mobile games like Hay Day. (And how is that commercial working out?)